Cut into cliff face along the aged road down to Apollonian and in the countryside in all directions for kilometers around Cyrene are the more than 2,000 graves of the old Necropolis.

Firstly built by the Greeks in the sixth century B.C, they were used and added to by the Romans and Byzantines right up until the sixth century AD. Many of the graves were soon used by nomads for habitation, some of them being pretty roomy. Some hold traces of the original architectural façades.

The hollows in front of several Greek tombs once held portraits of Persephone, the deity of death, while the Roman tombs held engraved portraits of the dead. On the hillside there are also several sarcophagi with lids.